Planning your Responsive Web design
You will have noticed that responsive web design has become a real buzz phrase in 2013. However, responsive design is not a new concept, in fact far from it. Making something that looks great on all browsers and across all platforms should be the benchmark for all web design. Reaching that benchmark requires Designers and Developers to slightly alter their outlook on a project.
There are a number of practices you can adhere to which will help to ensure your site is viewed in the best possible light. Below are some pointers both planning and technical.
Planning your Responsive Web Design
Responsive doesn’t just mean ‘squishy’. The majority of users will view these sites on different platforms, but won’t switch between them.
Just make sure the user can view the content in the most effective way. Alternate versions of sites are just as effective as a site that re-scales.
Responsive web…
@BruceDaisely, the UK Twitter Director advises on Twitter marketing approaches
With over 1o million users in the UK, that's 16% of the UK population, and in excess of 140 million worldwide: Twitter is a household name. There's an appetite to use it on mobile too, with 80% accessing it on their mobile.
I was interested to hear Twitter UK Director @BruceDaisely showcase it's successes and value to companies during his presentation at Teradata Connect2013:
'Marketing in the moment' is where Twitter excels according to Daisely; communications must combine relevance, interest and intent'
He gave examples of popular UK brands on Twitter, including some surprises. Automatic Doors have over 203,000 Followers as they are currently the fastest growing brand profile in the UK, according to Socialbakers.com with Nandos ranking top in the number of Followers at over 950,000.
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Timeless tips for more engaging blog posts
We have given many recommendations on managing content marketing in posts and guides this year, including how to plan the content, be creative and allocate the resources to manage the content.
This infographic explains how to engage through copy. It highlights 3 main approaches to how to improve your blog by building a 'captivated audience': 1. Building your audience 2. Use social media to drive traffic to your blog and 3. Increasing your subscriber account.
The infographic is from two of our favourite blogs, Blueglass and Copyblogger. It gives a nice simple refresher. If you don't know these sites, they're worth checking out.
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A briefing on this new branding feature in YouTube's "One Channel"
Viewers who are yet to subscribe to your YouTube channel and visit your channel page, can now be greeted by a video telling them why they should hit the subscribe button. This is an opportunity to show these potential subscribers what you do, and why they should sign up.
This new feature is just one part of the new “One Channel’ design that YouTube started rolling out in March 2013. The core benefit of this new design is that your channel will have a uniform look across devices. Other useful features include the ability to create playlists and the ability to link to associated channels straight from your channel homepage. The most exciting feature, as far as creativity goes, is definitely the trailer feature. Here's one nice example of a channel featuring it:
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The Facebook Studio 2013 winners for marketing creativity in different business categories
This year, Facebook ran their 'Facebook Studio Awards' to highlight the brands who are leveraging Facebook well and executed creative marketing campaigns, without the use of paid advertising.
We thought his alert would be useful to inspire ideas for Facebook pages you manage, so we have categorised the winning pages in different business categories.
The Top award was 'Blue' for Oreo's 100th anniversary campaign - with 100 ads over 100 days, sharing news stories projected on Times Square Billboards which were crowdsourced in real-time by their Fans.
Generated over 1 million Facebook interactions in 100 days and shares. Source: Facebook
We have categorised the award-winning campaigns so you can get your 'creative…
Match personas, content changes and stages of the buying cycle to help you nurture your leads
In my last post, Personalisation 101- How to increase customer engagement and conversion rates, I introduced the main types of personalisation available to make your site more customer-focused. In this post I'll expand on this by recommending approaches to segmenting your audience and making sure that your website’s personalisation directly meets your overall business objectives. I will show how to:
Use business objectives to define measurable actions
Identify the weaknesses in your website
Create personas for your core audience types
Use a Digital Relevancy Map to plot specific actions to personas and buying stages
Create a wireframe to translate this knowledge onto your webpages
Test and measure personalisation.
Making actions meet your business objectives
The first step is to lay the foundations for personalisation. To make a business case for personalisation you need a clear map of what personalisation…
Could Google Hangouts on Air be the solution for your video platform?
Videos are some of the trickiest marketing assets for companies to produce. They require a lot of preparation and are expensive to produce and market. Google Hangouts on Air offer a way to broadcast your videos to the world, for free. Could it be an cost-effective tool to improve your marketing strategies by creating videos quickly and broadcasting them widely?
What are Google Hangouts on Air?
Google created Hangouts as a web-based tool to allow Google plus subscribers to communicate via video. Originally, the tool set up a virtual room where up to ten people could hang-out together to converse or carry out more complexes tasks, like group meetings.
Last year, Google developed a feature that allows you to share your hangouts on your YouTube channels, and more recently, that allows you to broadcast your hangouts live to…
How UK consumers are using their mobile devices to inform purchase
Companies are embracing mobile marketing within their digital strategies, as consumers usage of technology is growing and lifestyles are changing. Our post from Danyl Bosomworth, which we keep updated with the latest statistics showing the uptake of mobile usage and adoption in the UK may be helpful if you are interested in further statistics to make your case.
This infographic is from xAD who partnered with up with The Nielsen Company, to explore how UK consumers are using their mobile devices to research products and services, what impacts their decision-making and how they purchase. You can access the full report at the MobilePathtoPurchase web site. It shows how mobile can be used to engage consumer and influence purchase. Touchpoints on the journey include:
Search - as with the desktop 84% of mobile users visit…
Tint gives businesses an easy way to bring Social Media Feeds to their websites
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Tint Gallery example
Last year, Chris Soames highlighted that companies are looking for ways to aggregate their social media content in one branded area, which we refer to as 'Social Hubs'.
There are already platforms or technology to support this, but recently Tint (http://www.tintup.com) has been getting rave reviews such as this intro from Rip Empson at TechCrunch. He explains how USC graduates, Tim Sae Koo, Nikhil Aitharaju, Eunice Noh and Ryo Chiba launched Tint in December 2012 as a simple, DIY platform that helps brands aggregate, curate and display social media feeds from multiple networks on their websites, in their mobile apps, Facebook pages and event displays.
So, it helps brands create social hubs on top of their digital properties. Businesses can link their Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest,…
Building a website that predicts the future (sorry no lottery numbers included)
You will have heard a lot about responsive web design (RWD) over the last 12 months, everyone seems to have an opinion about this hot topic. This post discusses the issue from a different viewpoint, showing the importance of creating responsive websites for devices yet to be invented.
Often posts on responsive web design explain what it is and the benefits of this approach. Here, however, we focus on the best, and in our opinion the only, way to design a responsive website to avoid this problem...
Responsive design has gone the way of the Discman!
As with other web technologies, the more popular and common responsive web design becomes, the more we expect from it. Let’s have a bit of nostalgia to make our point.
For those…
